


hate that you know me

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, During Canon, Dysfunctional Relationships, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 03:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14393139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: Sammy Stevens and Lily Wright had always been too similar for their own damn good.





	hate that you know me

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. Listen. If you hate Lily Wright, then you hate me personally. I love unlikable but ultimately deeply sympathetic female characters. And her and Sammy's dynamic is one of the most complex and heartbreaking dynamics on the show, which is remarkable with how little we actually know about their past, other than that it's fraught and complicated and painful and they're both so justified in their pain but go about dealing with it so badly, usually in regards to their treatment of each other and God!!! It's such a good dynamic!!
> 
> Anyway, welcome back to hell, my permanent home, where we love and respect Sammy Stevens and Lily Wright and how majorly fucked up and dysfunctional they are. Hope you enjoy, please comment if you do!

**_2004_ **

Lily Wright had intimidated the hell out of Sammy since the moment they met, but there was something viscerally terrifying about her barely regarding his presence as she slowly crocheted a scarf.

Her knitting needles clacked together as her heavily lidded eyes regarded Sammy with the utmost suspicion over her desk.

Sammy knew he’d made a mistake coming to her office hours, and internally berated himself for ever thinking that this was a good idea.

“Stevens,” she said, not bothering to set down the needles and instead continued to work as she spoke. “I can only assume you’re here to ask about extra credit after your….performance on the test last week.”

Sammy bit his tongue, quite literally, to stop himself from arguing. He’d gotten in enough trouble with Lily Wright this semester by arguing with her, and it was obviously not the answer to mending whatever reason his TA hated him so much.

Sammy was in his third year of school and no one, professor or graduate student, had ever managed to provoke the instantaneous fear that Lily Wright could with just a single glance. It would’ve been impressive if Sammy was watching her as a character on a television show, but having her in his life and grading his papers was a different story entirely.

No one, professor or graduate student, had ever graded quite as harshly as Lily Wright either.

“I am,” Sammy swallowed his pride, which he thought Lily might like. “The syllabus says that if we want extra credit, we need to talk to you during your office hours so…here I am.”

He’d almost gone straight to Professor Wilks, but decided that breaking protocol was probably something else that Lily thought was unforgivable, like humor or having a good time.

“Well, I’m not sure how much I can help you if you’re not going to take the coursework seriously,” Lily still didn’t set down her knitting needles, but she gave Sammy a large dose of judgmental side-eye.

The implication that he wasn’t trying riled Sammy up, but he couldn’t show any weakness. Lily Wright, he’d learned over the past three months, was like a shark. She could smell blood. Or, more accurately, she could smell Sammy’s nerves and desperation to not fuck up.

“I take the course very seriously,” Sammy said with a straight face, willing himself not to make some snarky comment about how he wished he hadn’t taken it in the first place or taken it without her as the presiding TA. “But your grading scale is currently working against me and I _need_ – I was _wondering_ if there was an extra credit work I could do to get my grade up.”

Lily blinked in his direction, clearly not caring. “You still have a C in the course over all. You’re not failing yet.”

“But I can’t – I would vastly prefer not have a C on my transcript if I can help it,” Sammy said through gritted teeth. “It’s very important to me to keep my grades up, and I would very much like an opportunity to do so. If you’ll let me.”

Lily finally set down her knitting needles. She didn’t smile at him, but her mouth made a funny movement that Sammy thought was probably a smile in Lily Wright-ese, which was a foreign language to most. Sammy sure as hell wasn’t a fluent speaker and never would be.

“There’s a series of roundtables about the history of media law in the country in the journalism school at Stanford, the last of which is on Friday,” Lily said, a wry smile on her face that said she clearly didn’t think Sammy was going to go for this. “If you’re willing to make the hour-long drive and do a five-page write-up for me, you can earn up to three percent extra credit.”

“I would be more than happy to,” Sammy told her, feeling a mild swell of victory in getting her verbal agreement. If she would actually give him the points was still a longshot, but at least he had a chance now.

“I guess I’ll see you there,” Lily said, a half-smirk on her face. Fuck. It wasn’t as if driving to Stanford wasn’t annoying enough, but now he’d have to deal with actually seeing her and possibly interacting with her there.

And she’d be judging him all the while, just like she was best at.

“I guess you will,” Sammy challenged back, but there was a knock at the door before Lily could impose any other crazy standard on this assignment.

Despite the fact that five or six TAs shared the office, the two of them were currently the only ones inside, so it was probably someone waiting to meet with Lily. Which meant Sammy could make his escape.

He rose to his feet as the door opened and a guy came in who was the level of attractive that Sammy couldn’t possibly make eye-contact with, and tried to skirt around him and get out the door.

“Hey, Lily,” the guy said casually to Lily before turning to Sammy with a bright look on his face. “Hey, I think you’re in my Media Ethics class. You’re Sammy, right?”

“I – yeah,” Sammy stopped, a little dumbfounded. Sure, he talked a lot in that class – Sammy talked a lot in most classes because he felt like talking was something he was actually good at – but it was a big class and he didn’t expect to be memorable enough that someone would know his name.

“I’m Jack,” the guy reached out to shake his hand and Sammy took it, confused but feeling better after the flogging his self-esteem faced at the hands of Lily Wright.

“Jack, we’re going to be late,” Lily said tetchily from behind him – Sammy had honestly forgotten she was there for a second – and Jack let go.

“Nice seeing you,” Jack said as Sammy headed out the door, giving the two of them a half-wave on his way out. Lily’s face was locked in a perpetual scowl, but Jack was still smiling, friendly and genial.

How anyone with a smile like was on speaking terms with Lily Wright was beyond Sammy’s understanding.

* * *

 

Sammy made it to Stanford with little trouble, only mild irritation at being forced to do this. But his grade desperately needed it, and if he could get an A on the paper, he’d crawl back into B- territory where he could live much more happily.

He took copious notes, more notes than he ever took in any of his classes, as the three professors on the panel droned on about the intricacies of the media’s tangled relationship with the legal system, figuring that Lily would appreciate attention to detail.

He didn’t see her when he came in, but he noticed her there about halfway through the presentation. Jack was there with her, too – or at least someone with the same dirty blond hair as him was sitting next to her.

The presentation was about halfway through when they finally took a break and Sammy was able to snag a Styrofoam cup of lemonade and a handful of pretzels from their small refreshment table. He was going to have to stop for coffee before he drove back to Berkley.

He had food in his mouth when Jack came up to talk to him, because the world was a distinctly unfair place.

“Hey, Sammy,” Jack said, his smile still in place. Maybe it was just always there. Seemed like a foreign concept to Sammy, but hey. “How’re you liking the talk?”

“It’s…not really my thing,” Sammy got out after swallowing the rest of his food.

“You’re taking a lot of notes for someone whose thing this isn’t,” Jack gestured down at the notebook in Sammy’s hands and Sammy realized a second later that Jack had noticed him during the talk, and hoped he hadn’t done anything too mind-numbingly embarrassing. “Plus, you had to drive a ways to get here.”

“Lily’s having me write a paper on it for extra credit,” Sammy admitted, which was generally the kind of thing he didn’t say out loud. “And I…really need it.”

“God,” Jack wrinkled up his face in annoyance, and Sammy hoped it wasn’t at him. “Dude, I’m so sorry. My sister isn’t known for her fairness or tact or…well, anything positive when it comes to her students.”

“Your sister?” Sammy said, not knowing why that fact made him happy. “You don’t look alike.”

“It’s because I look normal and innocuous and after almost a full semester with Lily, she starts to resemble a tiny and angry devil,” Jack said with a completely straight face. “I’m in the journalism school, too, and I specifically structure my class schedule every semester to make sure I’m not anywhere near her. Even if she’s in the classroom next door, I’ll avoid it because I don’t want to hear the shrieks of pain of students getting their papers back from her.”

“And I thought she was just that bad to me,” Sammy laughed with a rueful shake of his head.

“I love Lily,” Jack said, “but she’s got higher standards than tenured professors at Oxford. I’ll never take a class with her and she understands why. She’d probably fail me.”

“Well, I’m hoping to crawl my way back to a B- with this paper,” Sammy told him and Jack laughed.

“Dude, a B- with her grading scale? You’re doing just fine,” Jack assured him. “I guarantee you half the class is failing.”

“I need at least a B- to keep my scholarship,” Sammy found himself saying, even though that was yet another thing he hated admitting out loud, “so I _really_ need to get out of C range.”

Jack frowned at him, a concerned look on his face. “Oh, man, that’s rough – I can totally make her go easier on this paper –”

“God, no, I want to earn it,” Sammy said, though he was kind of touched that a basic stranger was offering to do a favor for him. “But thanks.”

“I can just gently bully her over the next few weeks about being nicer to students in general,” Jack said. “Don’t worry, I do it all the time around midterms and finals to make sure that at least half the class passes. She’ll have no idea it’s on your behalf.”

“Thanks,” Sammy said, a little bemused but altogether feeling a bit better about this, especially because Jack was approximately six thousand times nicer than his sister. He wondered how they could possibly be related. “Are you – I mean, you’re in one of my classes, so I guess you’re an undergrad, too?”

“I’m a junior,” Jack nodded in affirmation. “I think we’ve had a few classes together, but always really big ones. I’m just good with faces and names.”

“Well, I’m just terrible with faces and names,” Sammy said half-jokingly but half-serious. “Though I never would’ve guessed that you were Lily’s brother. You’re…very different people.”

“It’s shocking to most people,” Jack said with a laugh. “Lily honestly should be from New York with her high-strung attitude and constantly looking like she’s on the verge of castrating whichever man is nearest to her. I, on the other, personify the Californian stereotype of overusing the words _dude_ and _totally_ and owning more than one surfboard.”

“I’m guessing you guys are locals, then,” Sammy said, laughing at the easy charm that Jack conveys in a way that he’s a bit envious of.

“Not Bay Area,” Jack corrected. “We’re very Los Angeles.”

“Well, I’m from the Midwest, if you couldn’t tell that from the everything about me,” Sammy said, and Jack laughed, crinkles around his eyes. “Chicago suburbs, to be precise.”

Jack’s eyes lit up. “I love Chicago! Dude, the food is to die for. Have you –”

“Jack, the talk is starting up again – oh,” Lily appeared next to the beverage table at Jack’s elbow, but her disapproving glare was reserved for Sammy. “Hey, Stevens. Glad you could make it.”

“Hi, Lily,” Sammy said, doing his best to give her a tight-lipped smile. “Having a good time?”

“Well, they’re about to talk about the media coverage of Watergate which I’m talking about extensively in my thesis, so I’m looking forward to either hearing some good new information to include or feel a swell of my superiority complex if I know more about it than they do.”

She had a sardonic grin on her face, as if she could tell exactly what Sammy thought of her and her superiority complex. Still, she was making fun of herself, which was a good first step in Sammy not despising her completely.

Jack snorted in her direction – well, the fact that she had a brother as nice as Jack was probably a point in her favor as well. “Most of them were alive during Watergate, so I don’t think you’re gonna be the smartest person in the room on this one. I know, I know, brace yourself for the shock.”

 Lily rolled her eyes, but there was affection for her brother there, Sammy could tell. “Well, come on, let’s go sit down. Nice seeing you, Stevens.”

“You should come sit with us,” Jack said with a kind of ease even as Lily glared at him and Sammy shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll sit between you to make sure she doesn’t kill you or anything, Sammy.”

Lily’s glare slowly relented and Sammy said “Yeah, sure thing,” only halfway to spite Lily, but mainly because he wanted to keep talking to Jack.

Lily didn’t kill him on their way over to the seating area, which was probably another point in her favor, but Sammy thought she was about to again once they’d sat down and Jack said “Hey, we’re going to a party later that one of Lily’s friends is having tonight to make the drive down worth it. You should come, it’ll be pretty laidback.”

“Jack!” Lily hissed, looking a bit scandalized, before Sammy could answer. “He’s my student! He can’t see me drunk!”

“You’re just a TA, not a professor,” Jack hissed back, “and besides, he’s your student for another month, and it’s not like he’ll be taking a class with you again.”

“He hasn’t even said yes to coming to the party!”

“I’ll go,” Sammy said, half-surprising himself because he didn’t usually do shit like this, but his usual nerves had somehow quieted tonight for a reason he didn’t know. “I mean, if Lily’s not going to kill me for it or anything.”

“Maybe seeing her drunk will make her more likely to go easy on your paper,” Jack said with a little smirk in his sister’s direction and Lily punched his arm in retaliation.

“Fine,” Lily said to Jack, clearly annoyed, before turning to Sammy. “And just so you know, I’m going to give you a B- no matter what, so don’t take any blackmail photos or anything.”

“Really?” Sammy raised a shocked eyebrow at her. “Then what was with all of the posturing?”

“You could be good,” Lily said with an elegant shrug of her shoulders. “And people who could be good but aren’t yet need some pushing to get there. I don’t let anyone settle for second best when they could be first.”

Sammy blinked, bemused, thinking that was possibly as close as Lily could get to paying someone a compliment.

Jack gave Sammy a thumbs up when Lily turned to look at the speaker, which was somehow even more gratifying, even though Sammy didn’t really know why.

* * *

 

He figured out why approximately one month into his friendship with Jack Wright in a very innocuous way. They were studying in the library together around midnight, they’d were a little too buzzed on caffeine and both had a final in the morning, and Jack threw his head back to laugh at something Sammy said, and Sammy realized that shit, shit, shit, he was really into Jack.

Sammy hadn’t had too many close friends before, so it was easy to see how he’d ignored the signs and just focused on the fact that he was making a real, good friend. There wasn’t anything but friendship that could’ve stemmed from that night in Stanford when both Jack and Sammy had gotten stoned together outside a fast food joint and then woken up hungover on the floor of Lily’s friend’s house with Lily shoving one of Jack’s dirty socks under both of their faces to wake them up.

But the realization that it went beyond friendship came as a complete shock to Sammy – he knew, sort of, obliquely, that he was into guys, but it hadn’t been concrete when he was stone cold sober until now – and he immediately tried to block it out as best he could.

It didn’t help that Jack was probably the greatest person on the planet, and when he learned that Sammy didn’t have any plans for Christmas, immediately said “You can do Christmas with Lily and me! We have to go down to see our parents on the actual day, but we’ll be back the day after. We’ll do a big meal and everything. It’ll be great.”

Lily wasn’t Sammy’s TA anymore , but it was still a bit awkward when she answered the door to her and Jack’s apartment on December twenty-sixth.

“What’s up, B-?” Lily said with a little smirk, clearly proud of her mocking nickname for him, but Sammy didn’t really mind, since he’d actually gotten the grade in the class.

“Nothing much. How’s the Cruel Mistress of the Journalism School tonight? Did you put coal in all of the stockings of the students who failed to measure up to my excellent B- level standards?”

Lily hid a grin, just for a moment, and Sammy knew that a snarky attitude was going to be the only way to properly deal with Lily from now on.

And even though it had been only a few months ago that he’d sworn up and down that he never wanted to see Lily Wright again after the semester was over, it looked more and more like they were going to become fixtures in each other’s life.

“Hey,” Jack appeared a second later with his usual grin. He leaned over to half-hug Sammy, the kind of casual affection that Sammy wasn’t used to made even worse by the fact that he was acutely aware of just how much he liked it. His brain really needed to repress things faster. “So, I know we said we were making a meal, but we _actually_ brought leftovers back from LA because you really can’t top our dad’s cooking.”

“We would’ve had to call the fire department if we tried to cook,” Lily corrected with a roll of her eyes.

“Right,” Jack nodded. “That.”

“How were your –” Sammy began as they headed into the apartment’s interior but he was cut off by Lily before he could continue.

“Jack wants you to be his co-host for his timeslot with the college radio station next semester,” Lily said, drifting past the two of them and into the kitchen, where she promptly headed over to a tray with baby veggies, where she snapped a carrot with her mouth. “What? You said you were gonna ask him.”

Jack, from next to Sammy, glared at his sister. “Yeah, but I had longer than the first minute he was here to do it. Let me do things for myself for a change, Lily.”

Lily raised an eyebrow, clearly not regretting her decision.

Jack turned to Sammy, who was mainly just confused by all of this, with a sheepish half-grin. “Sammy, do you want to be my co-host for college radio next semester? I used to do it with Clarissa, but she graduated early. I promise it’ll be super fun – and you have a great voice for the radio.”

“Do I?” Sammy asked. He’d never really thought about it before. He was mainly interested in going into television broadcasting – something closer to entertainment than hard-hitting investigative journalism. “I’ve never done any radio before.”

“You’ve just got that voice, you know?” Jack said with a wave of his hand. “All natural charisma.”

That was definitely not a way that Sammy would’ve ever described himself – and from the snort from Lily’s direction, probably not her choice of phrase either. But Jack looked so genuine when he said it; it was hard not to believe him.

 “Yeah, I’ll do it,” Sammy said without even thinking about it, because that was kind of what friendship with Jack Wright was doing to his brain. “It might crash and burn, but hey, I’ll at least know if I’m terrible at it or not.”

“You won’t be terrible,” Lily, surprisingly, spoke up. “I don’t know about Stevens’s natural charisma, but the two of you bounce off each other. You’ll be a good team. Every audience loves some good banter.”

“Hey, maybe you should come on as a guest and insult the listening public,” Jack said, crossing the kitchen to poke at Lily’s shoulder. She gave him a faux-annoyed look that was clearly masking affection. “Then you and Sammy could snark at each other and everyone would know never to take a class with you.”

“Stop insulting my reputation!” Lily squirmed away from Jack. “We’re having a second Christmas dinner! You can at least wait until the semester starts again to tell me I’m a bad teacher!”

“You’re not a bad teacher, you’re a bad grader!” Sammy told her, and she flipped him off with as much affection as a flip off could have.

Sammy thought he’d never had a better Christmas.

* * *

 

**_2010_ **

Sammy and Lily sat opposite each other in their rinky-dink rented studio that they could barely afford to bills to keep using anymore, silently glaring at each other, unwilling to be the first to speak.

When Jack couldn’t talk sense into Lily, it was basically a lost cause and Sammy knew it but here he was with a last-ditch effort to get Lily to come with them.

If Jack couldn’t convince her, Sammy certainly couldn’t. Lily loved Jack, fiercely, protectively. She tolerated Sammy.

Well, that was an exaggeration – Lily loved him, Sammy knew, but she didn’t exactly like him. He didn’t blame her. Jack was much more likable than he was, it was entirely understandable.

Jack had always been more likable than the two of them put together. Sammy could usually sail by on that natural charisma that Jack claimed he had when they were broadcasting, but for all her genius in other areas, likable was one thing Lily wasn’t.

“I should’ve known this was coming,” Lily finally broke the silence, her voice and tight and bitter. “You never did take things seriously enough.”

“Lily,” Sammy said, low and dangerously, willing her not to push this, “I’ve always taken things seriously. But you have to admit it. We’re running out of money. We barely have a listenership. If we go to New York –”

“So you’re giving up,” Lily said, shaking her head. “Never pegged you for a quitter, Stevens. A coward? Sure. But not a quitter. Guess I was wrong.”

Sammy couldn’t argue with her about the coward bit, couldn’t even try to, and so he didn’t.

“This isn’t quitting, this is finding another option – together,” Sammy explained and Lily cut him off with a harsh laugh.

“Together? That’s what you call this?” Lily asked. “I’m not leaving San Francisco, Sammy. I don’t care how much prices go up. You think New York will be any better?”

“There’s a bigger market, more studios,” Sammy said, knowing he was repeating all of what Jack had probably already said, but Lily’s stubborn and will never agree to anything she doesn’t want to. Sammy knew this was going to be a dead end, but he had to try. For Jack’s sake if not for his own.

“More entertainment,” Lily said with a derisive snort and something in Sammy snapped.

“Yeah, Lily, more fucking entertainment, because there’s nothing wrong with entertaining people! Not everything you do is going to be Pulitzer-worthy, you just have to make some money until you can do what you want! That’s how the world works! I never thought I’d be telling _you_ of all people to stop being so damn idealistic.”

“No, no, Jack’s the idealist among us through and through,” Lily said in the tone of voice that Sammy knew all too well – it was the Judging Sammy and Jack Voice, or more appropriately, the Judging Sammy and Jack’s Relationship Voice. It was a voice that she was good at. She’d practiced it often. “So how’d you get him to agree to quit on me?”

“Neither of us are quitting on you,” Sammy was running out of patience and ways to explain this to Lily. She’d never hear it – she didn’t want to. “We’re asking you to come _with_ us.”

“Your idea, of course,” Lily said with a sardonic wave of her hand. “And Jack will go along with anything you say because he _loves_ you.”

“Yeah, he does love me,” Sammy spit out after only a second’s hesitation. “Sorry for your deep disappointment at that. But he does. And I love him. And we both love you, so please, will you just –”

“He’s my brother,” Lily said tightly, grabbing Sammy’s hand and pressing her sharp nails in. Sammy winced but didn’t pull away, didn’t show any weakness. Lily could smell weakness. “I don’t care what he is to you –”

“My boyfriend,” Sammy said, too involved in this argument to even check to make sure no one else was listening. “He’s my boyfriend, Lily.”

“Then why won’t you tell anyone?” A cruel smile twisted Lily’s usually pretty features. “It certainly won’t get easier when you’re in New York, you know. At least here, there’s a chance that coming out won’t blow up in your faces and destroy your careers. But in New York? Who knows?”

Sammy pulled his hand out of her vice as quickly as he could. “Shut up about things you don’t know shit about, Lily. I’m done with this, alright? I’m just done. If you want to come with us, you know where we’ll be.”

Sammy didn’t look back when he left the studio, even though he wanted to. He thought of Lily sitting there, alone, for hours and days and weeks after they were gone, and something horrible twisted in the pit of his stomach.

He did love Lily, in spite of her best efforts to drive his affection for her away. Being without Lily would be like being without a limb, even if that limb was very often punching Sammy in the face.

Jack was waiting in the parking lot, an anxious look on his face as he got out of his car.

“I tried,” Sammy told him heavily when he got close enough. “I’m really sorry, Jack.”

“Hey – it’s not your fault,” Jack smiled at him, and even though it had been years since college, it never failed to remind Sammy of that first conversation they had, when he couldn’t believe that someone could smile like that. “Lily’s her own person. We’re all perfectly aware of that.”

Sammy cracked a grin, but it was a weak one.

“We’ll be alright without her,” Jack said, and it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was Sammy. “And maybe someday, she’ll get over herself and we can have a show together again. I mean, I guess it’s a miracle we managed for the past few years at all without either of you killing each other, huh?”

Jack was joking because it was all he could do – Sammy understood. Sammy understood Jack just as well as Lily did, loved him just as much as Lily did, even if Lily refused to see it.

“Yeah,” Sammy said, and leaned into hug Jack, just for a second. He would’ve kissed him if they weren’t in a parking lot – almost kissed him anyway, just because today had been too goddamn difficult.

Jack seemed happy enough with the hug, squeezing back tightly.

“We’re gonna be alright, we’ll find something great,” Jack told Sammy as they got into the car, and Sammy tried to believe him. “A great hosting gig for you with me producing. Maybe we can even still host together. It’ll be fine. We’ll get through it.”

It sounded cliché as hell in Sammy’s head, but for all he cared about his career in radio, he couldn’t help but think that as long as it was him and Jack against the world, it would all turn out in the end.

* * *

 

**_2015_ **

The buzzer had been going off for close to five minutes before Sammy stumbled to the front of the house to let whoever it was inside.

He’d been asleep – well, not asleep, in a semi-drunken stupor on the couch and completely unwilling to get up and be forced to interact with someone. But the person just wouldn’t leave, and so Sammy finally made himself get the door.

He regretted it instantly when he opened the door for Lily Wright, hair dark and limp, bags under her eyes, split lip Lily Wright who looked as shitty as he felt.

It should’ve been good to see Lily. She should’ve been the one person who might have been able to bring him one shred of comfort during this horrible fucking ordeal, but Lily was nothing if not consistent in her blame of Sammy for this whole situation.

She’d flown up when Jack first disappeared for police questioning and screamed at Sammy in front of a police station that this was all his fault – she’d had to take it back, tell the cops that it was just an old grudge, that Sammy would never have anything to do with Jack’s actual disappearance – but the sting of it hadn’t gone away.

And now she was back and Sammy had to see her and look her in the eye and have to talk with her and he just couldn’t.

“What’re you doing here?” Sammy asked, trying not to slur his words too much. Lily would judge him for being drunk, just like she judged him for everything else.

“I’m his next of kin,” Lily said tightly, not even saying his fucking name. “I’m here to go through his things.”

“He’s not dead,” Sammy stared her down, not budging from blocking her from entering the house.

“We don’t know that,” Lily looked him in the eye for the first time, and the darkness Sammy saw there is enough to make him step aside and at least let her into the goddamn house. “But either way – I’m his sister. I have the right.”

Sammy knew what she was implying – that he didn’t have the right, despite the fact that he’d known Jack for ten years, been his boyfriend for seven of them, been engaged to be fucking married to him –

But Lily didn’t know that and Sammy couldn’t tell her. Not now. Not after everything.

Sammy was all too aware that in the eyes of the law, he might as well not exist when it came to Jack Wright. It was only because they lived together that Sammy still had his things. But the police weren’t under any obligation to call him and tell him any updates, if Jack was dead or alive. Sammy didn’t have anything.

“Go, then,” Sammy gestured up the stairs, knowing this was a battle he couldn’t win. And despite all of it, Lily did have the right, literal as well as emotional. She loved Jack, too. “Go through his goddamn stuff. Just – promise not to take everything. If it’s something from your childhood – if it’s something that you shared – then take it. But…God, Lily, if you ever loved me, just let me keep the rest.”

Lily gazed up at him, her usual tight and bitter eyes softening for half a second, but Sammy probably imagined that. She was gone, up the stairs a second later without so much as a look back at him.

It was for the best. They lost the one thing they still had in common, and now there was nothing between them.

It was ironic – if Jack was here, he could fix this. He could always make Sammy and Lily come together and agree on almost anything even if they were on separate hemispheres of thought before.

Jack could fix Jack being gone if Jack was here, but Jack wasn’t here, and God, Jack wasn’t here, he wasn’t here, he wasn’t –

Sammy wasn’t sure how long Lily was in the house, but he knew when she came back downstairs. She had a bag – presumably full – and she stared at Sammy from where he sat in the kitchen, drinking another beer, from the hallway.

He looked up and met her eye. For a second, she almost seemed like she was about to say something.

But then she was gone.

Sammy quietly walked back up the stairs, peered into his and Jack’s bedroom.

Jack’s things were strewn across the ground, but it felt like most everything was still there. His t-shirts, his watch, his notebooks, the photographs. She didn’t take it all.

He could tell that she took the picture from Jack’s wallet – the picture of the three of them a lifetime ago, at Sammy and Jack’s graduation, Lily standing between them with a look of utmost pride on her face.

Sammy thought about running out after her, begging her to come back, pleading with her to try to take this pain away and maybe he could take hers away too.

He didn’t, though. He couldn’t. There was too much space between them now.

* * *

 

**_2018_ **

People generally didn’t try to buzz up to Sammy’s apartment at eight in the morning, but when they did he knew that nothing good could be happening. Especially after a night like last night – with Lily fucking Wright of all people making the case for Sammy to stay in King Falls – today was going to bring nothing but heartache.

He was almost entirely unsurprised when he saw it was Lily fucking Wright herself. He let her in because he knew it would be a lost cause to try to lock her out, and she’d only get angrier. Sammy was too exhausted for that anger.

She was at his door in record time, her hair a complete mess and her clothes rumpled like she’d slept in them. The look on her face gave him pause, though – she looked almost familiar to him. She hadn’t looked familiar in a long time.

“You got alcohol?” Lily asked by way of greeting. “I don’t feel like talking to you sober anymore.”

“Kitchen cupboard,” Sammy let her inside. “Though I think I’m out of hard liquor. I’ve resorted to the Mike’s Hard Lemonade that’s been in my fridge since New Year’s.”

“Mike’s?” Lily snorted at him as she opened the door to the fridge, and Sammy flashed back to the hours he’d spent in college in her and Jack’s apartment, just drinking and talking and laughing and being so fucking young. “That’s the gayest drink ever.”

“Appletinis are the gayest drink ever,” Sammy sniped back at her. “And besides, I didn’t buy it; it’s leftover from Ben’s New Year’s party. And you drink Coors Light like the worst kind of straight guy, so don’t give me any shit.”

“That’s what we do, Sammy,” Lily said, shutting the fridge, walking across the room, and handing him a cold bottle of Mike’s. It was the use of his first name that really made Sammy stop and realize that they were actually going to have a real, in-person conversation. “We give each other shit. That’s how it always has been. Don’t know why you expected it to change now.”

Sammy laughed bitterly as he took a long swig. Mike’s wouldn’t be enough to get him drunk, but it’ll give him a buzz at the very least. “Everything’s changed. How’d you know where I live, anyway?”

“I’m an incredible investigative journalist,” Lily said with a wry grin, but this time she was actually making fun of herself. Sammy hadn’t heard that in a while. “Also, Ben told me.”

“Traitor,” Sammy muttered under his breath.

“He loves you, that kid,” Lily said, taking Sammy’s invitation into his apartment as an invitation to also sit at his tiny little dining room table that only has two seats. It was usually him and Ben, if anyone at all. It was odd to see Lily sitting there, but Sammy made himself sit opposite from her. “No idea why, but he does.”

Sammy couldn’t talk about Ben with her – he just couldn’t. Ben didn’t deserve to be slandered in the way Lily would surely eviscerate him if Sammy let her talk about him. So he took another long drink, and the two of them sat in silence.

“I wish there would’ve been a funeral,” Lily said, small and quiet, barely there. “It would’ve been better if there was a funeral.”

“How so?” Sammy didn’t want to know the answer, but he asked anyway.

“If there was a body,” Lily started, and something unpleasant thuds in Sammy’s chest, “that we could’ve buried. If there was a crowd and a coffin and a burial, where I could’ve seen his face and known that he wasn’t here anymore. If I could’ve known exactly where he was. If I could’ve kissed his forehead and said _goodbye, Jack, I love you –_ don’t you think it would’ve been easier?”

She was shaking, Sammy could see from the corner of his eye, but his eyes were welling with tears and that made it difficult to see much of anything else.

“No,” Sammy whispered, voice scratching. “It wouldn’t have been easier. Because you can’t bury a body when there isn’t one.”

“He’s dead,” Lily said, misery in her voice, but a kind of sharpness, too. “Sammy, you know and I know it. He’s dead. And maybe if there would’ve been a body – if the two of us would’ve had to be together at his funeral and accepted it together – then maybe we could’ve worked through it together. It would’ve been easier if we would’ve been together.”

Lily had never admitted so much as admitted that she needed Sammy in any way. The fact that she had was worse, somehow. It meant she was as hopeless as Sammy was.

“Yes,” Sammy gave her, “it would have. But there can’t be a body when he isn’t dead.”

“Fuck, Sammy,” Lily whispered harshly, and he can hear her take a long drink as well. “I’m here to find the closure that I never got at the funeral. I want someone to blame. I’m not here to get false hope.”

“You want to blame me?” Sammy laughed humorlessly.

“No,” Lily said slowly, “but I want to blame something. I want to face down the villain. I want to destroy whatever it was that destroyed my brother. And then maybe I can finally live again.”

Sammy wasn’t too interested in that, and he was sure Lily knew it. Living again wasn’t high on list of hopes for the future.

“He’s not dead,” he said instead, stubbornly, insistently. “I would know. I would’ve felt it.”

“And you think I wouldn’t have?” Lily’s eyes flashed in his direction, that old righteous anger of hers getting ready to veer its head once more. “He was _my_ brother.”

“And he was _my_ fiancé,” Sammy snapped back, the word tasting bittersweet in his mouth. “How about we just shut up about this for once? We both loved him. We both lost him. Let’s not keep making this a fucking competition to see whose hurting most.”

Lily was silent for a moment, but the hard lines on her face softened when asked Sammy, voice quiet and almost subdued and not at all like her “Would I have been invited?”

“What?”

“To the wedding,” Lily said, a little bitter smile on her lips. “Would I have been invited?”

It stung to even think about the idea of a wedding that Sammy would never get to have, but he swallowed his grief long enough to say “Of course. Of course you would’ve. Shit, Lily, I think you were the only name on our guest list that we never really got to make.”

Lily smiled, bright and almost charming. Lily was never charming. Sammy almost laughed.

“I suppose asking if I could’ve been Jack’s maid of honor is a step too far,” she said with a little chuckle and Sammy nearly laughed again.

“You would’ve had to pull double duty,” Sammy’s throat is thick with alcohol and good memories, and it’s all too much. “Jack and I really only ever had one good friend between us, and that’s you.”

“That’s changed, though,” Lily shook her head over at Sammy. “You’ve got Ben, now. And this town. Deputy Troy and Emily Potter and Ron from the bait shack and everyone else. Are you really going to give all that up?”

“Are you really going to give up your career and your life in the city all for some far off chance of finding closure here?” Sammy asked because he couldn’t answer her question. It hurt too much. “Even if that closure is just going to be what you already think? That Jack’s…that Jack’s dead and you can’t change it?”

“Isn’t that what you did?” Lily whispered, and Sammy wondered if she was already drunk when she came here, because this is more emotion than any of them can ever manage sober.

“I came to find him,” Sammy said because it’s the truth. “I just…failed.”

“We’re both failures of the highest caliber,” Lily said ruefully, lifting up her glass bottle in a mock toast. “To the two worst people on the planet, huh, Stevens? Can’t even mourn the one person who ever loved either of us in all our fucked up glory. Can’t do anything properly, you and me. Can’t do anything at all. Not without Jack. We’re useless without Jack.”

Sammy realized a second too late that she was crying. He’d never seen Lily cry before. Never. Not once. Lily didn’t do that. Lily had always been the strongest, toughest, take no bullshit person he’d ever known.

She didn’t cry, Lily Wright. Not ever. Not in front of Sammy.

“Hey,” Sammy said clumsily, not knowing how to do this. There was still so much space between them, but he felt like if he didn’t cross it now, then he never would.

So he took Lily’s hand and squeezed it.

She squeezed back.

“I can’t believe that he’s alive,” Lily shook through her tears. “I just can’t, Sammy. If he’s dead, then I can at least function. I can put him in the past and focus on remembering. But if he’s alive – God, he can’t be. I can’t do this if he’s alive. I’ll never find peace if he’s alive.”

They really did understand each other – Sammy knew that all along, but the stark reminder of it got his heart thumping too loudly in his chest. He and Lily Wright had always been too similar for their own damn good.

* * *

 

**_2019_ **

Lily was half-asleep on Emily’s shoulder when one of the doctors finally appeared in the waiting room. Shoving Ben off of his own shoulder, Sammy roughly jerked Lily awake.

She looked like she was about to bite his head off for a second before Sammy gestured up at the doctor, who was blinking down at their little camp out in the waiting room, waiting for them to be finished presumably.

“Yes?” Sammy asked, heart vibrating in his chest. They’d been out here for hours, not allowed into see Jack because his condition was so unstable. Getting him to the hospital from Perdition Wood had been the most viscerally horrific experience of Sammy’s life, but he was here. There was hope.

Unless the doctor was about to dash that.

“Mr. Wright is still alive,” the doctor said, his voice languid and calming and Sammy let out a large breath while Lily let out a shakier one, “but his condition is still unstable. Who here is his next of kin?”

Sammy felt sick to his stomach as he fell back in his chair. Of course, he still didn’t have the right to this. He was still nobody. “Lily –”

Lily elbowed Sammy in the gut and he gasped for air, turning to glare at her. But before he could, Lily yanked Sammy to his feet and locked their arms together.

“We both are,” Lily said, steel in her voice as she stared down the doctor. “Any information about my brother needs to be given to both of us. Any decisions that need to be made – we’ll make them together.”

The doctor nodded, gestured for the two of them to follow him.

 Lily almost quaked with the effort it took to move, but Sammy put a heavy arm around her shoulders and squeezed. In return, she guided him forward.


End file.
